Agnes Grey · Chapter 4 (2/2)

After this, Mr. Bloomfield was continually looking in to see if the schoolroom was in order; and, as the children were continually littering the floor with fragments of toys, sticks, stones, stubble, leaves, and other rubbish, which I could not prevent their bringing, or oblige them to gather up, and which the servants refused to “clean after them,” I had to spend a considerable portion of my valuable leisure moments on my knees upon the floor, in painsfully reducing things to order. Once I told them that they should not taste their supper till they had picked up everything from the carpet; Fanny might have hers when she had taken up a certain quantity, Mary Ann when she had gathered twice as many, and Tom was to clear away the rest. Wonderful to state, the girls did their part; but Tom was in such a fury that he flew upon the table, scattered the bread and milk about the floor, struck his sisters, kicked the coals out of the coal-pan, attempted to overthrow the table and chairs, and seemed inclined to make a Douglas-larder of the whole contents of the room: but I seized upon him, and, sending Mary Ann to call her mamma, held him, in spite of kicks, blows, yells, and execrations, till Mrs. Bloomfield made her appearance.

“What is the matter with my boy?” said she.

And when the matter was explained to her, all she did was to send for the nursery-maid to put the room in order, and bring Master Bloomfield his supper.

“There now,” cried Tom, triumphantly, looking up from his viands with his mouth almost too full for speech. “There now, Miss Grey! you see I’ve got my supper in spite of you: and I haven’t picked up a single thing!”

The only person in the house who had any real sympathy for me was the nurse; for she had suffered like afflictions, though in a smaller degree; as she had not the task of teaching, nor was she so responsible for the conduct of her charge.

“Oh, Miss Grey!” she would say, “you have some trouble with them childer!”

“I have, indeed, Betty; and I daresay you know what it is.”

“Ay, I do so! But I don’t vex myself o’er ’em as you do. And then, you see, I hit ’em a slap sometimes: and them little ’uns⁠—I gives ’em a good whipping now and then: there’s nothing else will do for ’em, as what they say. Howsoever, I’ve lost my place for it.”

“Have you, Betty? I heard you were going to leave.”

“Eh, bless you, yes! Missis gave me warning a three wik sin’. She told me afore Christmas how it mud be, if I hit ’em again; but I couldn’t hold my hand off ’em at nothing. I know not how you do, for Miss Mary Ann’s worse by the half nor her sisters!”